'Kenya can be bridge between East and West': Ruto tells China amid tension with US

President William Ruto on Wednesday praised his State visit to China as symbolic and akin to his May 2024 trip to the United States.

Amid the ongoing trade wars between Beijing and Washington and larger East-West tensions, Ruto, who has maintained that Kenya is "neither facing east nor west" but is "facing forward" in its approach to foreign policy and economic partnerships, said Nairobi can serve as a bridge between the regions.

“This visit, as the first African state visit to China this year, mirrors my 2024 visit to the United States, the first African state visit there in over 15 years. Perhaps, symbolically, Kenya can serve as a bridge between East and West, North and South, in an era of deepening geopolitical tensions,” he said in a lecture at Peking University in Beijing.

Ruto’s four-day China trip at the invitation of President Xi Jinping focuses on Beijing’s investment in Kenya's infrastructural projects, deepening trade relations, and regional peace.

On top of the Asian country’s infrastructure development and financial lending, it is Kenya's largest trading partner and the biggest source of imports. Kenya is, meanwhile, China's biggest trading partner in East Africa.

Ruto on Wednesday said Kenya and China are not just trade partners but “co-architects of a new world order.”

“One that is fair, inclusive, and sustainable. Let us measure our success not just in GDP growth or trade volumes, but in how many lives we uplift, how many futures we secure, and how much dignity we restore,” he said.

“Let this be our shared legacy: that China and Africa, through trust, vision, and partnership, helped build the foundation for a 21st-century multilateralism that serves all humanity,” Ruto added, referencing his calls for reforms in the international lending system of Western development finance institutions (DFIs) such as the U.S.-headquartered World Bank and the IMF, which he has repeatedly criticised as “unfair” to poor nations.

Early this month, Kenya terminated a 1.3-billion-euro (Ksh.190 billion) Nairobi-Nakuru highway expansion deal with a French consortium and turned to a Chinese contractor instead.

Ruto’s trip comes against the backdrop of escalating trade tariff wars between the U.S. and China after President Donald Trump imposed taxes of up to 145 per cent on Chinese imports early this month.

China has hit back with a 125 per cent tax on American products, and the war between the world's two largest economies is expected to affect other nations.